It used to be the case that if you named a unix shell script with the extension ".command", it would open a terminal window and run when I double clicked on it. I used this trick successfully to write a couple of commands which copy active files to/from my iPod so I can back them up and transport them between work and home. I then dragged aliases of the ".command" files to my desktop so I could run them every day.

The problem is that this has stopped working reliably. Some scripts work and some do not, and I can't seem to figure out why. The scripts in question run correctly if invoked from the command line on the terminal, but not when double clicked. In this case, the terminal application comes to the front, but the new script does not start to run. I can run the command from the terminal prompt, but I can't get it to start by double clicking.

This problem started about the time of the security patch to fix the problem with safari running shell scripts without asking first. I'm having it both on my work computer (running 10.4.9) and my home computer (running 10.3.9). The problem is that I no longer seem to have a method of blessing the scripts I run so that the system knows they are okay to run. And if they are blessed, then editing them (say to add a new project directory) means they no longer run via double click.

Minus a specific question, what can I say but "thanks for the update."



You may or may not know about alternatives like:

iHook 1.1
Pashua 0.9.4
Platypus 3.4
CocoaDialog 2.1.1

We can also wrap shell scripts in an AppleScript via:
tell application "Terminal"
do script "blah blah blah"
end tell
(practical for short scripts and one-liners, like the /path/to/your/executable)

Or alternatively, call Unix commands within an AppleScript via do shell script.

There's also Script Menu which (beyond AppleScripts) can also do shell scripts.


As far as commenting on your specific issue, someone might like to see
a ls listing of the ones that don't work... maybe even look at their content.

I just tested a really old '.command' I have stashed and it worked.
(I don't use them much, as I favor the methods mentioned above).

There is also the type ".term" we can create in Terminal which can run... but
they only seem to work via double-clicks when Terminal is *not* already up.

-HI-

This level of discussion almost makes me wish for a "translate to English" button.

Almond, I can only tell you that you are talking to the right guy for this one.

Depending on what a script does, it could be that neither Terminal nor
any of those special apps I mentioned are even necessary. Like... if there
are no 'echo' statements printing crucial info for the user to read, then
no "screen" output is needed. In such cases, those shell scripts can be
put in ~/Library/Scripts [or /Library/Scripts] somewhere (i.e., any sub-
folder thereof), and run via Script Menu. <--That link is a little outdated.
Tiger users install via: /Applications/AppleScript/AppleScript Utility.app

An extension to that would be to get the free FastScripts Lite (or its
$15 big brother) and assign *keyboard shortcuts* to call/run the scripts!!!
The 'Lite' version is limited to ten shortcuts (just enough to get us hooked).

If there's no text output for us to read, skip Terminal and just run "blind".
[EDIT: script messages in general wind up in console.log].

--

Here's a "poor man's" way to get a simple message (like "script done" or
something) from a background script to the GUI:

code:
 

# include this function in the background shell script:

function GUImessage ()

{

     /usr/bin/osascript <<-HEREDOC

     set appName to (info for (path to frontmost application))'s short name

     tell application appName

          display dialog "$1" giving up after 5 -- [optional 5 second timeout]

     end tell

HEREDOC

}



# Put lines like this in the background shell script: 

GUImessage "a GUI dialog from a background shell script"

And there's also the "say" command (paste in Terminal to test):
/usr/bin/say backup done $(/bin/date "+%A %H %M")

With those that don't work have you tried using full paths even where you think they shouldn't be needed? That is certainly often crucial for AppleScript shell scripts.

My question is how do get a shell script to run by double-clicking its icon? The help file for terminal claims it is possible, but I can't get it to work.

A little more testing is revealing that it works under 10.3 but not under 10.4. So it must be something which was "fixed" with the new operating system release. This has "broken" a couple of other commands as well.

In answer to one query, I don't think that there are any path dependencies. The scripts in question look like:

code:

#!/bin/bash
if [ -e /Volumes/rgaPod/Projects ] 
then
ipp=/Volumes/rgaPod/Projects
else
    echo "iPod not attached."
    exit 1
fi

rsync -av --exclude "*~" ${ipp}/graphTutor/ $HOME/Projects/graphTutor/

(with a bunch of other similar rsync calls). The rsync command dumps a list of copied files to the terminal so it is occasionally useful to scan the output to make sure a critical file was copied. (For the most part, these are unix style projects, so I don't need the rsyncX which provides support for resource forks and other similar oddities.)

I don't see any path dependencies, unless the location of bash has moved or there is a hidden problem lurking in my .login or .bashrc file.

I briefly considered writing a wrapper apple script to call my shell script, but it seemed unnecessarily recursive. I've got the shell script doing more or less what I want and I don't want to heavily invest in learning another system when I can just type at the terminal to work around the problem.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

As a postscript, after I upgraded to 10.4.10, the .command files mysteriously started working again. Somehow whatever got broken was mysteriously fixed. Anybody who has a similar problem, I'd suggest trying the combo updater.

Thanks again for all the suggestions. I think that there are a lot of interesting ideas in this thread.